Last week Surrey House, the student block that we have “temporarily” been living within for the past 3 years, was violated by a very professional burgler. The Halls’ manager asked me to help get a snapshot from the CCTV footage so I was fortunate enough to see him in action.
The first thing that struck me was how old he was – at least in his 40s. Not the sort of ratboy I’d expected. The second was how coolly he managed to wander in. From the end of the road he clocked a bunch of bewildered looking parents heading to the main door, and ran up until he got within sauntering distance. A student heading to the launderette was only too happy to admit the complete strangers before they even got a chance to ring the doorbell, and our man kindly held the door for the parents as they preceded him into the foyer.
A short while later he sauntered back out with a newly acquired carrier bag containing a newly acquired laptop. The former owner of the laptop had thoughtfully left her door unlocked while she went out for the day.
Now, to be perfectly honest, this really didn’t bother me too much. If there are going to be burglars then I’d much prefer them to be polite, efficient, thieves of easily replaceable consumer goods from unlocked rooms, rather than home-wrecking turd-distributors that piss all over your photos. In fact I almost admired him…
But when, a week later, he interrupts my mellow programming by looking at me through my front window I think that’s taking the piss. It’s like mice; I don’t mind co-habiting with mice. But when they start crapping over my food and interrupting my TV viewing I get the mousetraps out.
So I ran upstairs to get a second opinion. The only person I could find was Adrian, a really good, old, friend whom I haven’t seen for months, and this took me by surprise; a dangerous thing to happen when you are already in a state of surprise. Unable to explain the situation, I pathetically spluttered, and gestured until, like Lassie, I managed to persaude him that I wanted him to follow. We watched him amble around outside the door and then, after taking some shit out of a skip, wander into the back garden of a house over the road. This was definitely the guy…
So, I called the Police on the poor bugger. They turned up in about 10 minutes (not bad at all), by which time Raffles had fucked off up the road. Five minutes later they called me and told me they’d caught him! They described him to me and asked about the CCTV footage.
Now I’m waiting for a further call back.
Eek!
What if it’s not the guy ?
What if it is the guy ?
Eek!
